


All Work, No Play

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Captivity, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, Gen, Ghosts, Hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22766551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Memories, and a mirage.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	All Work, No Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antipattern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antipattern/gifts).



> A/N: I didn't get this done in time for Blue Christmeth Madness, but here it is!

He’s tapping again. He loves to rattle around in Jesse’s brain when Jesse is just about to go to bed. He’s been awake so long now that it’s like he’s back on meth and wide awake, paranoid and shaky. 

Whenever he sleeps in the car, that’s when he sees him most clearly, like he’s full-fledged, bodily solid. It’s not as bad in the hotels, where there’s an odd sort of homey comfort around (no matter how run down and reeking of chlorine the place is), but in the car he’s always sitting in the passenger’s seat, perusing with that look on his face, cigarette hanging from his lip, Jack dead just like Jack alive.

“You’re never going to make it,” Jack declares, over and over, because that was the kind of thing he always said. 

And he isn’t lying, not really. Jesse’s sure that he’s more than likely right.

Jesse’s chances of making it out of New Mexico aren’t good. Can’t blame a ghost for being honest.

***

“You’re a real little piece of shit, ain’t you?”

Jesse looked up, slowly, but didn’t quite let himself meet Jack’s eyes. He knew that wasn’t allowed. He was an inferior – that had been beaten into him right now. He not only felt it but, hell, he smelled it. 

Should he say no? Yes? What should he say? What was the right answer, the answer that would help all of this to end?

Jack’s hand reached down and pinched behind Jesse’s neck, as if it was picking up a stubborn cat. 

“I better not hear word one out of you,” Jack continued, and Jesse was confused as, as far as he could remember, he hadn’t said word one, two, or three in quite some time. But he nodded, because he felt like that was the appropriate response. Jack seemed like one of the parents Jesse used to see on ABQ Ride when he was a teenager, who would scream at their kids for things as simple as looking out the window.

Maybe it didn’t matter what he did.

He was a dog, after all, a dog for them to kick when they needed something to kick. 

Jesse didn’t know where he was going, but it didn’t matter. Gone were the days when he could actually ask something like that and have it answered. God, he missed Mike’s gruff words to him now, or even Mr. White’s long, unwieldy lectures that took forever to get to the point. Even if Mr. White hated him now. Even if he hated Mr. White now. 

He still missed him. He missed his whole life, as sad as he had been sometimes. As lost as he had felt sometimes.

If he could have turned it back…

“Hey, rat!” Jack exclaimed. “Hurry up!” He pulled the chain, hard, and Jesse found himself flying off of his feet and face-planting into the sand. Jack let out a tsk-tsk noise. “I told you to hurry up.”

And so he hurried. 

***

“Why not just turn yourself in?”

He’s learned to travel. Jesse is sitting outside Kandy Welding, now, petting a beetle and waiting. 

“Because then none of this would be worth it,” Jesse replies. He isn’t sure whether the words had come out of his mouth or not, or whether he’s just imagining this. If he makes it out, truly makes it out, he’ll need to use the cool air to clear his head so he won’t go crazy. And if he doesn’t make it out, he’ll be discussing it from his jail cell or a hole in the ground, so it doesn’t matter.

He tries not to picture being stuck with Jack for all time. He shivers.

He doesn’t give Jack time to reply, to say something rude and snarky, or to try to push him with a guiding hand. Sometimes, when he would close his eyes, Jack’s “friendly” shoves and demands felt like Mr. White’s, and he isn’t ready to go there. Not yet.

Not right now. Not for a long time, not when Walter White is only just in the ground and Jesse’s sure that he will rise from the flames and that he, like some terminator villain, will be back and this time it’ll be personal.

****

“Hey, ya little shit. Come up here and talk to me.” 

Jesse struggled up the ladder, up his ladder. He didn’t know what he was walking into; he never would know what he was walking up to, as much as he had tried to convince himself that he had gotten used to Jack by now.

He certainly didn’t expect him to look him up and down and ask him, “What were you planning to do with your life, anyway?”

Jesse stared at him, wondering if he had beard him right or if this was proof that he was going crazy or was trapped in some kind of shadow realm or something.

“It ain’t a trick question, rat. What was your big ol’ grand design, after all this was said and done, what was your big ‘reach for the sky moment’ going to be?”

Jesse craned his head to the side, wondering if what Jack really wanted was an answer at all, or maybe something else.

“I don’t know,” he said, finally. Thoughts of art seemed very far away now, anyway, and his parents had told him that could never be a sustainable career. Joke was on them that he’d made a sustainable career out of selling meth, instead. He cracked his neck, feeling dizzy and barely there, and inquired instead, “What did you want Todd to be?”

He couldn’t quite read Jack, then, and the man huffed out after a long moment and mumbled something about how Jesse had really better watch it because they were treating him a lot nicer than they really could have, and it was only for Toddy’s sake that he was alive in the first place. 

“I raised Toddy from yeh high,” Jack told him. “He’s everything to me. My sister didn’t want a thing to do with him. But I did. I always did.”

****

“I need to do this,” Jesse says, rolling his tongue and speaking to himself, to Jack, to the beetle maybe. “I need to prove that I’m not…” What had Mr. White called him, back in the desert, before he had gone spiraling into Hell with no hope of escape? To prove that he is not a coward. 

“You need to break out of the prison you made for yourself,” Jack tells him, and it’s surprisingly good advice from a dead Nazi, which probably doesn’t mean good things for Jesse’s continued sanity. 

The car pulls up and Jesse sees women in heels running – not for the first time. Maybe not for the last.

He lets out a sigh and rose from his spot, letting the beetle scurry off into the grass. He hopes that it will be all right. It hasn’t done any harm to anyone, after all. Just little things, trying their best to survive out there.

“Maybe you all are,” and although it’s Jack’s voice speaking, it’s not Jack’s thought.

Jesse lets his hand linger on the gun as he sucks in as deep a breath as he can muster.

It’s time.


End file.
